The Minister of Health, Alexandrou Rafila, says that in the period 2018-2022, the Department of Emergency Situations was to purchase, based on a framework contract, a minimum of 2,100 ambulances for the ambulance services under the Ministry of Health. but in the last three years no new ambulances have been bought, in four years specialized services have received 600 ambulances, according to News.ro.

“I can’t get into that controversy, I think he’s more specialized in this matter, with the recordings, I know he also had a problem in the office a few months ago, related to this matter, with the microphones. I don’t really specialize, maybe he has a different type of specialization than I do in this field.

I believe that we should, first of all, be serious and leave such speculations, which can sometimes seem childish, and see if there really are problems in the activity of the Ambulance, let’s try to have a dialogue and solve them, and not all kinds of statements that testify about all kinds of conspiracies that don’t exist,” the health minister said in a phone call on Romanian television on Tuesday night, referring to Raed Arafat.

Alexandrou Rafila said that the fact that the ambulance service has “extremely old” specialist vehicles and that more than 50% of the fleet is more than 10 years old affects the safety of both patients and crews.

The minister claimed that in 2018-2022, the Ministry of Emergency Situations should have purchased at least 2,100 ambulances or a maximum of 4,300 special vehicles, but the ambulance received only 600 special vehicles.

He explained that it was a framework contract developed over the past four years that had not been procured for the past three years, “putting patient safety and crew safety at risk.”

“The fact that we will not be able to get new ambulances in the coming months or perhaps in the coming years is alarming,” added the Minister of Health.

Rafila said she had been in discussions with Ambulance union representatives, indicating that they had “lesser” demands for wages and decent working conditions. According to the minister, more than 50% of existing ambulances are over 10 years old, and 3,000 special vehicles are not working.

In a Facebook post on Monday, the head of the State Emergency Service explained that the latest subsequent contracts for the purchase of ambulances were not implemented due to the driver crisis.

“It was not DSU that created the semiconductor crisis, it was not DSU that created the global post-crisis supply problems of the past two years, and it was certainly not DSU that created the chaos caused by the aggression against Ukraine, which led to very serious destabilization of markets, rising costs and a significant increase in delivery times,” – wrote Arafat.

He claimed that including ambulances were delivered in the last three years, and in the period 2018-2022, 821 ambulances were delivered to ambulance services, and another 106 ambulances were purchased by the Bucharest City Hall for the ambulance service of Bucharest.

“To talk about the fact that the “ambulance” was sabotaged and they did not receive an “ambulance” is at least humiliating and lying to the management of the State Emergency Service. During the same period, SMURD received 386 ambulances,” Arafat explained.